In a world of constant connectivity, managing your digital presence across social media can quickly become a full-time job. While many businesses choose to employ a community manager or agency to assist with the workload, there is a wide range of free social media management tools available for more hands-on brands. Here we have gathered a list of our top recommended free tools for managing your social media accounts.
Social media management tools could be a huge help for many businesses; however, not all of them are as effective as they claim or as easy to use. If you’re interested in finding out more about the best social media management tools 2021, continue reading.
If you want to take your social media game to the next level, it might be time to invest in a social media management tool. Social media marketing software can help you amplify your efforts, and allows you to create, schedule and post social media content, tweets and captions on all of your platforms at once. The best tools save you time by letting you easily research, schedule and post content on multiple platforms.
Social media monitoring and management tool is an application which is used to manage multiple services like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and many more at a single place. There are tons of social media management tools available in the market. If you are using any of these tools or planning to use one you may check out this list of best social media management tools 2021 for brands and business owners. These tools help brand marketers in managing different accounts simultaneously saving time and cost.
Tips before you start:
- Plan posts in advance.
- Brainstorm social posts to bring new voices into your social media presence.
- Plan both evergreen and timely posts to delight audiences in the moment while also scheduling perennially relevant posts.
- Keep a running list of relevant hashtags and new ones you could use.
- Plan visual content in advance to make your posts pop.
- Track how your posts are doing and keep engagement metrics on hand.
- TRACK TIME… ⏰: Track ongoing work so you can set and achieve your goals.
HashtagsforLikes
HashtagsforLikes is the best hashtag research tool for social media marketers. The useful tool allows users to search for trending hashtags, and monitor specific hashtags used by their competitors or influencers in their niche.
HashtagsforLikes is extremely useful for hashtag research but it’s also a powerful hashtag analytics tool. You can use the tool to track the hashtags you’ve been using and how well they are performing. It also has a useful curate feature that allows you to run tests on hashtag groups you’ve created.
This tool is a must-have for social media managers that need help planning content and analyzing their social media strategy.
Pricing:
Prices start from $38/month. HashtagsforLikes also offer a weekly payment schedule.
Sprout Social
Sprout Social enterprise-level all-in-one social media management tool. The tools offer a range of useful features such as publishing and scheduling, analytics tracking, social media listening, and engagement.
Sprout Social makes it easy for businesses to manage social media engagement on a large scale with the help of a unified social inbox. Every aspect of social media management from creating and scheduling posts to manage personal and direct messages can be performed from the Sprout Social dashboard.
Pricing:
Pricing starts from $149/user/month. There’s is also a 14-day free trial available.
Buffer Publish
Buffer Publish is a simple social media scheduler tool that can be used to make social media publishing more organized and streamlined. You can use the tool to create, schedule, and publish posts, as well as managing Instagram stories, all from the same dashboard.
The tool was created with agencies in mind and allows teams to easily collaborate on their social media tasks.
Buffer Publish also features a shop grid tool, which allows companies to easily link from Instagram posts to shoppable pages, which is a great addition for eCommerce businesses.
Pricing:
The free version of Buffer Publish includes 10 posts per month, across 3 social channels.
There are also paid plans available with a bigger post allowance. These plans start from $15/month.
Crowdfire
Crowdfire is a similar app to Hootsuite in many ways. More than 19 million users worldwide use the Crowdfire app to automate their social media activities. It’s packed with features that make everyday life easier and more productive.
The free version of Crowdfire allows you to link three social media accounts, schedule 10 posts per account, and provide you with one day of social analytics data.
With Crowdfire, you can connect up to 25 accounts and schedule posts across all platforms from one place.
Using their hashtag suggestion feature, you can get the most used and relevant hashtags for your posts quickly and easily. They also have auto-customize content for each platform, so you don’t have to spend time creating multiple posts across different platforms.
Additionally, you can schedule up to 50 posts at once using their bulk upload feature, saving your time and effort. You also get access to up to 30 days of your account’s performance data analytics in just seconds.
Pricing: Crowdfire offers four different plans.
- Free plan: link up to 3 social accounts, schedule 10 posts, hashtag recommendations
- Plus plan ($7.48/ mo): 5 social accounts, schedule 100 posts, connect up to 5 RSS feeds
- Premium plan ($37.48/ mo): 10 social accounts, bulk schedule posts, up to 15 RSS feeds, additional team member
- VIP plan ($74.98/ mo): 25 social accounts, scheduled 800 posts, 25 RSS feeds, 20 competitor analyses, 30 days social analytics data.
Tailwindapp
Tailwind is a complete marketing toolkit for Pinterest and Instagram that allows you to manage social media accounts from one platform. However, unlike other tools, it only supports two platforms.
Using this tool, you can schedule posts at the best times, create beautiful pins faster, discover content, monitor conversations, amplify your reach, and measure results.
With Tailwind’s smart scheduling tools, you can schedule hundreds of pins at once in just minutes. As a result, you don’t have to spend hours pinning every day or waste valuable time trying to find new content ideas – they got you covered.
The analytics tool of Tailwind is quite impressive. It shows which of your pins are performing well, as well as followers, top pins, referral traffic, organic activity, comments, and much more.
Pricing: There are four types of plans, including a free version.
- Free plan: one Pinterest and one Instagram profile, 20 posts per month, five tailwind communities, basic analytics, one user
- Pro plan ($9.99/ mo): one Pinterest and one Instagram profile, 100 posts per month, advanced analytics, 200 post designs per month
- Advanced plan ($19.99/ mo): Two Pinterest and two Instagram profiles, 1000 posts per month, unlimited post designs, two users.
- Max plan ($39.99/ mo): Three Pinterest and Three Instagram profiles, 1000 posts per month, unlimited post designs, unlimited tailwind communities, five users.
Zoho Social
Zoho Social is a powerful social media management tool that helps businesses and agencies manage their social media accounts. It allows you to schedule posts, monitors mentions, create custom dashboards, and more.
Like other tools, Zoho Social offers a free plan that includes one team member, a zShare browser extension, and publishing on seven social channels. And, of course, premium plans come with more advanced features.
Using this tool, you can schedule unlimited posts, track social media activities, create custom reports to analyze your performance, and get notified when someone shares something about your brand on the web. It also comes with an easy-to-use interface and intuitive design that makes managing multiple accounts easier.
One of the features I like most about the collaboration. It allows you to collaborate with your team seamlessly. You can also assign custom roles to your team members so that they can work on different projects.
Overall, Zoho Social is a great tool for social media management and a free alternative to Hootsuite.
Pricing: They have four different plans. Also, each of the plans offers a 14-day free trial.
- Free plan: 1 team member, one brand, publishing on seven channels, access to zShare browser integration
- Standard plan ($10/ mo): Everything in the free plan, including multi-channel publishing, user tagging, drafts, Twitter location
- Professional plan ($30/ mo): Everything in the standard plan, including Livestream, CustomQ, bulk scheduling, RSS feeds
- Pro plan ($40/ mo): Everything in the professional plan, including SmartQ, content approvals, workflow, collaboration, content targeting, lead ads.
Hootsuite — Best tool for managing social media profiles
Hootsuite is an exceptional social media management software that acts as the one dashboard that you can use to manage multiple social media profiles simultaneously. Aside from the user-friendly interface, businesses can use their free version to connect up to 3 social media profiles to keep all related activities in one place. It’s a perfect feature for small businesses as they are usually required to operate a few accounts to get their hands on free PR opportunities.
Hootsuite provides access to a free publisher software where users can create posts and use this tool as a post planner to schedule the release of these posts across different social channels, using just one main source to do it. In case a business has a frequent need to create fast posts to keep their audiences up to date and engaged, Hootsuite provides the Hootlet Chrome extension – an excellent feature that allows the user to share any content relevant to their audience with ease and in a timely manner.
Key features
- Manage multiple contributors
- Data gathering by tracking brand mentions
- One-step multiple networks updates
- Optimize delivery
- Social analytics reports
Pricing
- Professional – $19/month
- Team – $99/month
- Business – $499/month
- Enterprise – By quote
Agorapulse — Best software for real-time profile syncing
Social content needs constant updates to stay relevant and engaging enough. That’s exactly what Agorapulse is all about. It allows the user to use the social media inbox option to keep their content fresh and up to date. Aside from syncing all social media profiles in real-time, this fantastic social media management tool saves old conversations and allows the user to retrieve any information, if need be. Businesses mostly use it to ensure they don’t miss any relevant tweets, likes, comments, etc. Agorapulse is also a performance measuring tool, allowing businesses to track their efforts by getting customized reports in PowerPoint.
Key features
- Facebook analytics
- Twitter management
- Team functionality
- Calendar view
- Instagram monitoring of hashtags and brand username
- Advanced PowerPoint reports
- CSV reports
- Advanced scheduling and queueing options
Pricing
- Free trial
- Medium – $99/month
- Large – $199/month
- X-Large – $299/month
- Enterprise – $499/month
Later
Later is the best tool for scheduling and publishing on Instagram. It was founded in 2014 and now powering more than 4 million users globally.
Initially, it was started as a simple Instagram scheduling tool, but later, they added more platforms like Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter.
Later offers a free plan that includes one social set (including one Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, and Tiktok account), schedule 30 posts per social profile, and basic analytics.
They also have tons of pre-made templates, so there’s no need to start from scratch ever again.
Using their hashtag research tool, you can find the right hashtags for your posts; it even provides advanced analytics so you can see how well your posts are doing in terms of engagement.
Pricing: Later offers four different plans, including 14 days free trial.
- Free plan: 1 social set, 30 posts per social profile, one user
- Starter plan ($12.50/ mo): 1 social set, 60 posts per social profile, one user, Linkedin bio
- Growth plan ($20.83/ mo): 1 social set, 150 posts per social profile, three users
- Advanced plan ($33.33/ mo): 1 social set, unlimited posts per social profile, six users
What makes a great social media management tool?
Social media management apps have one purpose: to make managing your business’s social media presence easy and efficient. Most small businesses don’t have the staff or the time to waste posting individual updates and checking in on each site a few times every day. With this in mind, we set out some pretty firm criteria on what we felt made a great social media management tool:
- Each app had to support multiple social networks: at the very least, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Support for other networks or services was a bonus but not essential for inclusion.
- It’s easy to waste time on social media—whether you’re posting for yourself or your business. It shouldn’t be a hands-on job that takes time every day. This meant we required apps to enable you to schedule future posts and updates so you could batch your social media work into a couple of blocks each week. Also, it was ideal if apps offered access to your social media inboxes away from the distraction of the feed, so you could reply to customers without getting sucked in.
- Social media shouldn’t be a crapshoot. Different audiences will engage differently with different kinds of content. To make it easier for you to identify what content works for your audience, the best social media management tools will offer detailed analytics on how your posts do. (Unfortunately for marketers, not all social networks allow the same kind of analytics, which means you won’t necessarily get the same features for every social network you use.)
- Finally, all the apps had to be cost-effective for small and medium businesses. There are plenty of enterprise- or influencer-focused apps out there that charge a serious premium for features you’ll never use. Price wasn’t as much the issue as value for money.
It’s also worth noting that every app has a free trial or even a totally free plan. Don’t decide on one based just on our observations; try the two or three that sound like they might suit you best, and go from there.
Conclusion
Instagram has become one of the hottest social media networks around. While recent years have seen some unexpected changes to the platform itself, Instagram’s popularity hasn’t slowed down. On the contrary, Instagram remains a very powerful marketing tool – especially for content marketers.
It is difficult to manage your social media accounts, I know. But with the help of free social media management tools, it has become easier to manage your accounts and make use of automation techniques for growing your business on social media.